Solitude and Silence...

Silent retreat.

A period of solitude and silence to allow one to love oneself unconditionally.

Spend time with oneself, turning inward, quieting the mind, moving away from worldly passionate desires, clinging and cravings, to know oneself, to love oneself.

Though immerse in solitude and silence, one is not lonely or bored. In fact, one is full of peace and joy being independent on any external impermanent names and forms to be happy, confident and meaningful.

When one loves oneself, one will appreciate all the love, appreciation and companionship from other beings, but one doesn't dependent on the love, appreciation and companionship from others to be happy, or confident, or meaningful, or not. One also will love others without any attachment or expectation, as one doesn't need to depend on love, or appreciation, or companionship from others to be happy, confident and meaningful.

This is different from ego-centred love. Ego-centred love is when one only loves what one’s ego desires, likes and wants, but don’t know how to love oneself, or others. In this case, one loves oneself and others unconditionally.

If one doesn't love oneself, one is always looking, clinging and craving for love, appreciation and companionship from others to escape loneliness or boredom, or to be happy, confident and meaningful. One also will not know how to love others, as one will have attachment, clinging, craving and expectation towards others, as one is dependent on the love, appreciation and companionship from others to be happy, confident and meaningful. One will be dissatisfied and unhappy when the love, appreciation or companionship that one craves for is not available.

May all be free.

Love and Relationship

One might be in a relationship with another one, but there’s no love.

One might have love for another one, but there’s no relationship involved.

One might think and say to another one, “I love you.”

It will be true if it is unconditional and won’t change even though impermanent changes occur in everything and every moment.

It is not true if it is conditional and will change when impermanent changes occur in certain things and through time, with a mixture feelings of affection and love with anger, hatred, jealousy, unhappiness, hurt, dissatisfaction, disappointment, doubt, fear and worry.

One might think and feel that one loves another one, but the truth is, one only loves what one likes and wants. One doesn’t love the one whom one thinks one loves. Neither does one loves oneself.

There is only egoistic personal desires, craving and clinging onto what the ego likes and wants in most relationships that involve mixtures feelings and affliction.

Only when one is completely be free from egoism, then one knows how to love oneself and love another one, without egoistic personal desires, craving and clinging.

Most people have one or many relationship, but without love, they attach and cling onto one another for getting what each likes and wants. When either one or both didn’t get what they like and want, the relationship breaks apart.

When two beings are being together, without clinging or rely onto one another for gratifying personal desires, it is love that keeps them stay together naturally.

If one of the two beings in a relationship doesn’t have love, then there will be affliction arise in this being when one doesn’t get what one likes and wants from the relationship.

May all be free.

Something beautiful and rare...

When two people in a relationship have gone beyond egoism and attachment, personal cravings and desires, the relationship will be only joy and happiness. Such relationship is beautiful and rare.

Freedom in love relationship?

Freedom in love relationship is when our love comes to a point that we don't want anything from the one whom we love, but only wish him or her to be safe and happy.

Love relationship is a training ground for letting go...

If we truly love someone, we need to be able to let go of expectation and attachment towards the love we have for him or her. Allow him or her to love us as he is, as she is.

The one who truly loves us will not do anything to hurt us without us expect anything from him or her. If he or she doesn't want to love us and wants to go, we will let him or her go, wishing him or her peace and happiness, even though it's not easy, it might be painful.

If someone we love very much would do things that will hurt us, it means that he or she doesn't love us or appreciate us at all. We can't do anything about it. We have to accept that he or she doesn't love us.

What's the point holding on strongly towards someone who doesn't love us and doesn't appreciate us, who doesn't respect the existing relationship with us, who doesn't care if it will hurt us out of selfishness and passionate desires?

Once we develop compassion towards ourselves, we will let go of our love towards him or her, and just allow him or her to be what he is, what she is. We will treat and love him or her as a friend who doesn't appreciate someone who loves them, not as my lover or my partner. Then whatever he or she does will not generate hurt in us anymore.

If we feel hurt when we realized the one whom we love doesn't really love us, is because we think and expect the one whom we love will love us, and if he or she loves us, he or she won't do anything to betrayed our love for him or her. But that is a selfish thinking and expectation. We can only allow him or her to love us out of his or her free-will, then without our expectation, he or she will love us without us ask him or her to love us. Out of their own free-will and self-control, they won't do anything to hurt us because they love us. And that is freedom.

When we allow the one whom we love to love us as he is, as she is, it doesn't mean that we should allow him or her to intentionally doing things that will hurt us, if he or she doesn't love us. It's not okay. But we can choose to let go of this love relationship that is meaningless.

We don't have to love someone who doesn't love us. And that itself is loving ourselves and the one who doesn't love us, by letting go the love we have for him or her. If we still feel hurt, it's because we couldn't let go the love we have for the one who doesn't love us, even though they might tell us they love us, but they don't really love us, because they only love what they like and what they want from us. Why do we want to be hurt for loving someone who is selfish and doesn't deserve our love?

If we couldn't let go, we generate tension in ourselves and the person in the relationship with us, whether the one in the relationship with us loves us or doesn't love us. We won't be peaceful or happy being in a tensed relationship, even though we think we love him or her very much.

When we rise above the pain of letting go the one whom we love, our hearts find love and peace that come from loving our loved one unconditionally.

Do not be jealous with other people's relationship that is full of joy and happiness, and think that it's not possible to have such flawless and beautiful relationships in this world. When two people have gone beyond egoism and attachment, personal cravings and desires, the relationship will be only joy and happiness. Such relationship is rare but it exists.

Letting go...

The one who loves us will love us without us expect him or her to love us, or won't do anything that will hurt us. The one who doesn't love us will not love us, no matter how much we love him or her. We need to love ourselves and let go the one who doesn't love or appreciate us.

Om shanti.

About insult or disrespectfulness...

There is a public dispute about some people took some nude photos on the top of a 'sacred' mountain and being blamed for the earthquake that has taken some lives and caused some damages.

Every living being is being born into this world naked.

When someone feels insulted or disrespected by something, it is the mind that projects the quality of 'insult' or 'disrespectfulness' onto certain names and forms that is responsible for the mind to feel being insulted or disrespected upon coming in contact with what the mind projects and believes as 'insulting' and 'disrespectful'.

There are people who believe nakedness is something highly sacred. And there are people believe it is something truly insulting and disrespectful towards sacredness.

Whether the mind believes nakedness is something sacred or something insulting and disrespectful towards sacredness, it's just something that the mind wants to believe what it is. Nakedness itself is neither sacred nor insulting towards sacredness.

If the mind is dirty, then nakedness meant something dirty for this being. But it is not what nakedness truly is.

If the mind is sacred, then nakedness meant something sacred for this being. But it is not what nakedness truly is.

Nakedness is just what it is.

Nakedness has no quality to be something 'insulting' or 'disrespectful', but coming from the mind thinks and believes that "being naked" is something 'insulting' and 'disrespecting', and it intentionally wants to be insulting or disrespectful by being naked to insult or disrespect others.

Something truly sacred or pure cannot be contaminated by any impurities.

If something claimed to be sacred can be offended and threatened by something that is 'impure', 'insulting' and disrespectful', no one should go near to that thing that claimed to be sacred.

If the 'God' is 'someone' easily be offended and be threatened by impure and ignorant human being's ignorant behavior, and will get very angry and will hurt those ignorant beings out of anger and hatred, what type of 'God' is this?

If a mind is not pure, full of evil and corrupted thinking and ill-will, this mind is being 'disrespectful' and 'insulting' within itself, towards itself, even if it puts on sufficient, respectful or decent clothing on the physical appearance.

Living in the world with so many different human beings with different thinking and beliefs, we should try to respect other people's conditioned thinking and beliefs for what they think is respectfulness, appropriateness and sacredness.

That's why some wise people try to stay away as much as possible from some other human beings to avoid unintentionally 'insult' or 'disrespect' certain people, and generate unnecessary tension.

Those who are pure will not have any interest to insult or disrespect anyone, nor be determined by other people's intentional or unintentional insult or disrespectfulness.

Om shanti.

The truth is still what it is whether we agree or disagree with it...

The truth, it is not necessarily something pleasant for the egoistic mind, or the way that the egoistic mind would like it to be.

It is the freedom of every mind to have certain thinking and belief, to be conditioning the mind to think in certain ways and to believe in certain beliefs, to influence our action and reaction, or how we behave.

There's nothing wrong for the mind to generate agreement and disagreement towards everything that it comes in contact with, based on how the mind thinks and what the mind believes what things are.

It is the natural habit of the prideful egoistic mind to argue and criticize about something that it disagrees with, for being different from its own thinking and belief, to prove that this is right (my way, my thinking and my believe) and that is wrong (other ways, other thinking and other beliefs). Or else the world would be quiet being free from argument, dispute, criticism and condemn.

Argument, dispute, criticism and condemn coming from the prideful egoistic mind about certain thinking and beliefs are right and good (my way of thinking and my belief), and all the others are wrong and bad (anything else that is being different from my way of thinking and my belief), is subjective and pointless.

The same object, some say it's beautiful, some say it's ugly, based on their own standard of what is beauty and what is ugliness. It is individual projection from each mind to label everything into this and that. The object is just what it is. It is neither beautiful nor ugly. There's nothing wrong with some minds think it's beautiful, and some minds think it's ugly, but it is not the truth of the object.

When we start to let go of attachment towards a particular type of thinking and belief including the thinking and belief in our own minds, as well as all the teachings of all kinds of different philosophy of life existence, we start to see things as they are. There's no right or wrong, good or bad, but just being different. And everyone takes full responsibility for the consequences of their own freedom of choice to take up certain thinking and belief to live their lives, for how they want to think and what they want to believe.

If we expect everyone else in this world to also comply to the same thinking and belief that we attached to, we'll get frustrated, unhappy, angry and hating when they are being different from us. It is coming from our own attachment and expectation, it's not because we are right and they are wrong.

Yoga is about to free the mind from ignorance and egoism through the practice of renunciation, dispassion, desireless, non-attachment, non-identification, and realize non-duality, oneness or non-separateness, or namelessness and formlessness.

Some people including those who think they are practicing yoga or teaching yoga, might dislike and disagree with this teaching and practice. And it's okay.

Those who don't practice yoga because they dislike and disagree with the teaching and practice of yoga, and so, they don't.

Those who love to practice yoga or want to teach yoga, but, they would prefer the yoga that they want to be practicing or teaching, to be the way that they would like it to be, or to be what they think it should be. They don't want to hear or talk about renunciation, non-attachment, dispassion or desireless. And there's nothing wrong with that, and nothing to be arguing about. They have the freedom to think and believe in what they want to think and believe. They are practicing yoga, just that not as what it is, but how they like it to be.

That's the point of what yoga is about. It's oneness, non-separateness, namelessness and formlessness. It is beyond all the different qualities of name and form. There's no prideful egoism, attachment, identification, judgment or expectation, and hence there's no argument, criticism, or condemn.

If someone disagrees with what has been said here, they can't say anything.

Either they say something to argue or criticize, or they don't say anything, not arguing or criticizing, it also shows that there's nothing wrong with this teaching.

If they want to say something about their disagreement on this, and want to argue or criticize about this, it proves that this teaching is true, that every prideful egoistic mind that attached to certain thinking and beliefs, will want to argue and criticize about something that it disagrees with for being different from its point of views based on how it thinks and what it believes.

If they don't say anything, it also proves that this teaching is true, that there's nothing to be argue or criticize about. It is not about what is being said here is true, or not true.

Those who truly practice yoga don't argue or criticize about something that the mind disagrees with for being different from its own thinking and belief, based on how it thinks and what it believes.

Whether the mind agrees or disagrees with something, it is still what it is. Whether we think and believe the apple is tasty or not tasty, the apple is still what it is. It doesn't has the intention or quality to be tasty or not tasty. But coming from each individual's likes and dislikes towards different tastes, different minds have different opinions towards the same taste. It's the same for all the other names and forms of sights, sounds, smells, sensations and thinking.

Any thinking and belief, no matter how good and right we think they are, it is still within the subjective point of views.

Go beyond all the different thinking and beliefs, and realize the universal truth, that everything is just what it is with different names and forms. And beyond all the different names and forms, all is one, there's no separateness. There's no superiority nor inferiority. The mind rests in silence, at peace.

But the ego doesn't like this at all. It prefers the distinctiveness between superiority and inferiority, and ceaselessly strives to make itself more superior than others, and to maintain that superiority. It doesn't like to be in silence, or to be at peace. It enjoys restlessness, stimulation or excitement. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Those who don't like and disagree with this teaching are free to think what they want to think, to agree or disagree with anything, to debate and argue about everything.

May all be peaceful.

Be free.

Can't expect others to love us if we don't love ourselves...

Love ourselves is when we know how to free our minds from ignorance and all the by-products of ignorance. Being free from ignorance, we will know how to be kind and compassionate towards ourselves, and towards other beings who are not free from suffering due to ignorance.

It's nothing to do with self-pampering in pleasurable physical or mental enjoyments.

Although we might attain some fleeting satisfaction and happy feelings by regularly improving or upgrading our knowledge, professional skills, physical appearance, health and fitness condition, social and financial status, to attain higher quality of life or living standard, or by indulging in pleasurable physical or mental enjoyments, we might still be restless and be disturbed by impurities, if the mind is not free from ignorance and its by-products.

When the mind is free from ignorance, we do not expect others to love us, to feel being loved, but allow others to love us or not, out of their freedom.

We can't expect others to love us when we don't even love ourselves, or expect those who love us to love us in certain ways that we want them to love us, when we keep harming our body and mind with so much impurities derived from egoism, attachment, identification, desires, craving and aversion under the influence of ignorance, whether being aware of it, or not.

May all be free.

Mind the mind of oneself...

Mind...
Doesn't know about itself.
Doesn't know how to manage the impurities, feelings and emotions.
Being unhappy, lost and confused by the impurities, feelings and emotions.
And complains about its unhappiness.
But, it still wants to be busy minding other minds, and constantly looking for faults, clashes and conflicts.
It doesn't want to manage its own problems, but it wants to create problems for others.
If 'I' don't have peace and happiness, 'I' also want to make sure other minds to share my restlessness and unhappiness.

If a mind is being busy engaging in observing, restraining and purifying itself,
if a mind is resting in peace,
it doesn't have the excess time and effort nor interest to mind about other minds.

It allows other minds to mind themselves,
to think and believe what they want to think and believe.
to say what they want to say.
to do what they want to do.

And be free...

Do cheerful people only have happy feelings and don't have any unhappy feelings?

Being cheerful doesn't mean that there is not any unhappy feelings and there's only happy feelings all the time.

There's nothing wrong with happy and unhappy feelings. It's part of the normal function of the mind to react upon coming in contact with the objects of the senses that the mind likes and dislikes, agrees and disagrees with. Or, due to mood swing caused by hormones imbalanced. But cheerful people know that all these feelings are impermanent. They do not have clinging or craving towards happy feelings, or aversion towards unhappy feelings. When happy feelings are absent, they are still cheerful as they are. When unhappy feelings arise in the mind, they are still cheerful as they are.

Those who know non-attachment towards happy and unhappy feelings, they are not being determined by all these fleeting happy and unhappy feelings to be who they are, to be happy or not, to be confident or not, and to feel meaningful or not.

Cheerful people might have unhappy feelings when their minds come in contact with the objects of name and form that the mind dislikes and disagrees with, or when they are not getting the names and forms that the mind likes and wants. Or, when their hormones are imbalanced. But, they know how to let go of unhappy feelings more easily and quicker than those who have attachment towards all the perception of names and forms to be determining them to be who they are, to be happy or not, to be confident or not, and to feel meaningful or not.

The lesser and weaker attachment towards any names and forms, there will be less reasons or lower chances to be unhappy, and vice versa.

Those who have less demand and less expectation, who are less fussy and easily content, who are patient, tolerant, generous, forgiving, adaptable, adjustable and accommodating will have less trigger of unhappy feelings, and vice versa.

Go beyond the identification of 'happy being' and 'unhappy being'.

Keep practicing non-attachment without expectation until the mind is completely be free from any impurities that derived from ceaseless reactions towards objects of name and form influenced by the desires of craving and aversion.

We will realize unconditional peace that is beyond all kinds of happy feelings, and undetermined by any qualities of name and form, when we are free from the desire of want to feel happy and want to be a 'happy being', or don't want to feel unhappy and don't want to be an 'unhappy being'. But, allow all the happy and unhappy feelings to come and go without generate attachment or identification, without craving or aversion.

Love ourselves as we are even though the mind is not being happy all the time.

Be free.

Feel disturbed for being mistreated?

If people want to be unhappy and upset when they think they are being mistreated, let them be. It's their freedom to feel how they want to feel.

Most minds are being conditioned to have expectation. They expect to be treated in certain ways and not to be treated in certain ways. They expect all beings should and shouldn't behave in certain ways, based on what they believe as the good way and the bad way, the right way and the wrong way.

Prideful mind thinks "I deserved to be treated like this, and I don't deserve to be treated like that" and feels disturbed for being 'mistreated' the way that it thinks it shouldn't be treated.

Low-esteem mind also thinks "I deserved to be treated like this, and I don't deserve to be treated like that" and feels disturbed for being 'mistreated' the way that it thinks it shouldn't be treated.

Ego-less mind lets everything and everyone to be what they are. There's no 'I' being treated nicely or badly, rightly or wrongly. There's neither 'deserve' nor 'don't deserve'. There's no right treatment or mistreatment, but only different types of treatments. There's no pride or low-esteem coming from attachment or identification with any qualities of name and form to expect to be treated or not treated in certain ways.

Go beyond all the attachment and identification with any qualities of name and form, and be free.

We are happy and peaceful as we are, regardless what types of treatment we receive from everyone. It's their freedom. But we are not determined by other people's freedom of thinking, action and speech to be happy and peaceful, or not.

If we expect other people should or shouldn't be treating us in certain ways, we will be very disappointed when we are not being treated the way that we think it should be. We are disappointed by our own expectation, it's not because other people didn't treat us nicely or rightly. We are not happy is because we are not getting the things that we like and want, or the way that we like it to be, and we are getting something that we don't like and don't want.

Even when someone gives us something that we like and want, but, not the way that we like it to be, we will not be satisfied or happy.

Om shanti.